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Silent Circle removes warrant canary

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Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#31

Post by knodi123 »

logicallee wrote: post #26
Retric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great way to end up in prison. That said, civil disobedience has been used in the past to great effect.

>That's a great way to end up in prison easy there, cowboy, this isn't East Germany just yet. I think American authorities can tell the difference between what they do and the Stasi. As in, I actually, literally think they can tell the difference. Nobody will be ending up in prison for posting the above. Seriously. Show me a judge who'll do that. You don't get a 4-year philosophy degree before getting a JD in America…

Depending on the intelligence and compassion of a judge is a great strategy. I'd bet that it works >50% of the time. But ask the legal counsel at a publicly traded company whether it's worth the gamble, and you'll get the same advice that the downvoters in here would give you, if they weren't in such a hurry.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#32

Post by jfoutz »

logicallee wrote: post #26
Retric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great way to end up in prison. That said, civil disobedience has been used in the past to great effect.

>That's a great way to end up in prison easy there, cowboy, this isn't East Germany just yet. I think American authorities can tell the difference between what they do and the Stasi. As in, I actually, literally think they can tell the difference. Nobody will be ending up in prison for posting the above. Seriously. Show me a judge who'll do that. You don't get a 4-year philosophy degree before getting a JD in America…

You're right, no one is going to prison. However, a federal court case starts at 1.5 million to defend. Not many people have that in the bank. They can make you miserable for years. This has played a role in at least one person's suicide.

Getting on the bad side of the feds is pretty brutal.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#33

Post by anonbanker »

Bail.

We need to crash the company in order to give these guys plausible deniability when they do not cooperate. The company will die, but another will be created. Their freedom is on the line.

Abandon ship, citizens. Your Bill of Rights commands you.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#34

Post by zekevermillion »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #27
zekevermillion wrote: post #5

I'm not sure warrant canaries are particularly useful anymore. Yes, it's nice to know when a company has received a secret order or request for cooperation. However, any company that stores user information is going to receive such an order or request at some point, it's practically inevitable. Furthermore, one can never be assured that a canary is entirely reliable as a signal -- just look at the other comments with…

> Furthermore, one can never be assured that a canary is entirely reliable as a signal -- just look at the other comments with conjecture as to why a canary might be removed. I would treat the removal of a canary as I would a fire alarm. Sure, it's possible that it's a business decision, just like it's possible that the fire alarm is a false alarm. But I'd rather make the assumption that is most likely to protect me.

Fair point. I would make that assumption from the beginning though, regardless of whatever the service provider tells me. It's a shame though, as the warrant canary is such an ingenious legal device that I have to admire it even as I doubt its usefulness.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#35

Post by nickpsecurity »

dexterdog wrote: post #24
nickpsecurity wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had friggin Navy SEALs in it's advertisements. They know what we need because they were in the field and needed secure comms. Help run the business, too. All that told me is anyone concerned about Five Eyes surveillance better run.

The founder and original CEO was a SEAL.

Didn't know that. Icing on the cake of my claim. Not even me having anything against SEAL's: two in my family with one decorated. I just have to assume their loyalty will lead them to side with military or intelligence over Constitutional principles. It would be different if code was all open, jurisdiction + servers non-US, and review by mutually-suspicious parties. Then I could focus on product more than the subversion risk of people or country involved. Lacking any of these, there's residual risk.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#36

Post by logicallee »

jfoutz wrote: post #32
logicallee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's a great way to end up in prison easy there, cowboy, this isn't East Germany just yet. I think American authorities can tell the difference between what they do and the Stasi. As in, I actually, literally think they can tell the difference. Nobody will be ending up in prison for posting the above. Seriously. Show me a judge who'll do that. You don't get a 4-year philosophy degree before getting a JD in America…

You're right, no one is going to prison. However, a federal court case starts at 1.5 million to defend. Not many people have that in the bank. They can make you miserable for years. This has played a role in at least one person's suicide. Getting on the bad side of the feds is pretty brutal.

I'd like to see a federal court case over publishing "Apr 2016 - " in a context that meant it's a canary. Go ahead and publish it. No one will sue you. Nobody will throw you in prison. Nobody will show up in black cars and take you to an interrogation. Nobody will put a bullet in your head. These questions about warrant canaries have been answered by judges, and not in the way that either I quoted or that you clarified.

I welcome any links you have that show otherwise.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#37

Post by cordite »

I've been using Silent Circle's black phone 2 for almost a year now, and it is a rather terrible experience.

They are ahead on app-specific permission denials, but they have hardly any sense of decent QA for their SilentOS.

Previous updates had power regressions where the phone would be dead from a full charge within 8 hours. Took 3 months for them to fix that. Most recent update no longer has a functioning headphone jack, and will forget all bluetooth paired devices on reboot. It also is crashing after 15 minutes of map usage as it seems to overheat.

Perhaps they may do better in the future, but I won't be staying with their product and services for much longer.

That said, it seems like the explicit update-system they run for their own software and the operating system would lessen the likelihood of an on-demand compromise from a state agent to an individual's device. Though it's not like the individual can do anything besides trust that the signed packages are authentic.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#38

Post by abhorrence »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #18
swordswinger12 wrote: post #6

I have an honest, and probably dumb, question: how do warrant canaries actually avoid the prohibition against disclosing the receipt of a national security letter? Like, how is taking down a warrant canary legally dissimilar from just tweeting "we got an NSL"? If it semantically "means" the same thing, then why is one illegal and one legal?

I'd like to see it tried in court, anyone with two braincells can see that it signals that a NSL was received, something that's prohibited by an NSL. The intent and signaling are there.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that warrant canaries work through inaction. If a court were to require the continued publishing of the canary, they'd be crossing the line from something approximating a "temporary restriction", to compelled speech. And though I think neither are particularly defensible, the latter is much less so.

The key with warrant canaries is that they aren't removing a line from something previously published, but failing to publish an update to to it.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#39

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

jakobdabo wrote: post #11
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why monthly and not daily? Or hourly?

I haven't put much thought into it, I guess it could be daily but hourly is overkill I think. Actually, this is an interesting startup idea - warrant canary as a service, with an API.

how could you possibly justify daily... as in, you need to know the day of... but knowing within the hour, so you can do whatever you would do with that data immediately isn't a better idea???

you obviously haven't thought about much, lady.

Re: Silent Circle removes warrant canary

#40

Post by matthewmarkus »

jakobdabo wrote: post #4

Current warrant canaries are useless, it's a one time fuse. We need new, better, recurring (i.e. monthly) warrant canaries of different types (common canaries, individual canaries for each user). I want something like this everywhere: Jan 2016 - we haven't received any NSL Feb 2016 - we haven't received any NSL concerning your account Mar 2016 - we haven't received any NSL Apr 2016 - Jun 2016 - we haven't received an…

I've always wondered if there is a side-channel that could be used instead of a warrant canary. More specifically, my understanding is that witnesses have Miranda Rights. Therefore, couldn't a company promulgate a process whereby they'll publicly solicit bids for legal counsel should they receive a NSL? If they start asking for bids, you can assume they've received a NSL. If not, then no NSL has been received.

Any lawyers in the house?

* Edited slightly for clarity.

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